A Response to J.I. Packer on the So-Called Antinomy Between the Sovereignty of God and Human Responsibility

John Piper

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including A Peculiar Glory.

John Piper

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including A Peculiar Glory.

In his book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of
God (Chicago:
InterVarsity Press, 1961) J. I. Packer argues that the sovereignty
of God and the responsibility of man is an antinomy. He defines
"antinomy" as "an appearance of contradiction between conclusions
which seem equally logical, reasonable or necessary" (p. 18). It
"is neither dispensable nor comprehensible...It is unavoidable and
insoluble. We do not invent it, and we cannot explain it" (p. 21).
God "orders and controls all things, human actions among
them"...yet "He holds every man responsible for the choices he
makes and the courses of action he pursues" (p. 22). "To our finite
minds this is inexplicable" (p. 23).

The first thing to notice here is that the antinomy as Packer
sees it is not between the sovereignty of God and the free will of
man. Packer is too good a biblical scholar to think there ever was
such a thing as "free will" taught in the scripture. Thus the whole
conversation between him and myself can proceed on the cordial
agreement that free will is an unbiblical notion that is not part
of the antinomy because it is not part of revelation.

But now I would like to ask where Packer gets the idea that this
so-called antinomy between the sovereignty of God and the
responsibility of man is "inexplicable" to our finite minds? Does
he simply have an intuitive feeling that we can't understand the
unity of these two truths? Or is it that he has tried for 40 years
to explain it and has found that he can't? Or does he appeal to the
endless disputes in the church on this subject? Packer does not
tell us why he thinks the antinomy is an antinomy. He simply
assumes that "it sounds like a contradiction" to everybody. He also
assumes that anyone who is discontent with antinomy and tries to
probe into the consistency of its two halves is guilty of
suspicious speculations (p. 24). I disagree with both assumptions:
everybody does not think the sovereignty of God and the
responsibility of man are apparently contradictory (for example
Jonathan Edwards), nor is it in my judgment, improper to probe into
the very mind of God if done in the right spirit.

Proper Probing

Let's take the second point first. Packer refers (p. 23) to
Romans 9:19, 20 "You will say to me then, 'Why does He still find
fault? For who has resisted his will?' O man, on the contrary, who
are you to dispute (antapokrinomenos) with God?" What is Paul
rebuking here? A sincere, humble desire to understand the ways of
God? No! He is rebuking the arrogance that calls God's ways into
question. The word antapokrinomai means "grumble, dispute, make
unjustified accusations" (TDNT vol. 3, p. 945, cf Lk. 14:6). Paul's
dander is up because he has already explained in 9:14-18 why God is
righteous in electing some men and rejecting others totally apart
from their distinctives (9:9-13). But the objector, unwilling to
accept that answer, calls God into question again. Yet
Paul-unwilling that any should say he has failed to explain the
matter-goes on and in verses 22 and 23 unfolds further his
justification of the ways of God. If finite men are not to
understand how God can be righteous while condemning those whom He
sovereignly controls, then why did Paul write Rom. 9:14-23?

I think Packer is wrong when he says, concerning Paul's response
in Rom. 9. "He does not attempt to demonstrate the propriety of
God's action" (p. 23). He does indeed! That is why he wrote Rom.
9:14-23. I also reject the sentiment of these words: "The Creator
has told us that He is both sovereign Lord and a righteous Judge,
and that should be enough for us" (p. 24). Why should that be
enough for us? If that were enough for us Paul would have told the
questioner at Rom. 9:14 to keep his mouth shut. But as a matter of
fact the only time Paul ever tells people to keep their mouth shut
is when they are boasting. If our hearts and our minds pant like a
hart after the water-brook of God's deep mind, it may not be pride,
it may be worship. There is not one sentence that I know of in the
New Testament which tells us the limits of what we can know of God
and his ways.

I might just say in response to much silly talk about the
dangers of exhausting the mysteries of God, that my conception of
God makes such a thought ludicrous. If we may compare God's wisdom
to a ragged mountain and our growing understanding of it to a slow
assent, I do not have the slightest fear that during some midnight
meditation I may (by the grace of God) attain some new ridge and
all of a sudden find I am on the peak of the mountain with no more
cliffs to climb. On the contrary, for every newly attained height
of insight there stretches out an ever more glorious panorama of
manifold wisdom. And one can only pity the poor souls who, for fear
of finding out too much, never approach the sacred mountains but
stand off and chirp ironically about how one should preserve and
appreciate mystery.

Seeking to Understand

The other point of disagreement with Packer was his assumption
that the two-fold presentation in scripture of God's sovereignty
and man's responsibility sounds to everybody like a contradiction.
It didn't sound like one to Jonathan Edwards after he thought about
it long enough and it doesn't sound like one to me. I think anyone
who is going to dogmatically assert that humans can't understand
this "antinomy" must first show that Jonathan Edwards has not
understood it. I will try to develop in the briefest possible way
how Edwards attempts to show "that God's moral government over
mankind, his treating them as moral agents, making them the objects
of his commands, counsels, calls, warnings, expostulations,
promises, threatenings, rewards and punishments, is not
inconsistent with a determining disposal of all events, of every
kind, throughout the universe, in his providence: either by
positive efficiency, or permission" (The Freedom of the Will,
Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. Inc., 1969 p. 258. All page
numbers below are from this edition.)

First, Edwards argues that the thing which determines what the
will chooses is not the will itself but rather motives which come
from outside the will. More precisely, "it is that motive, which,
as it stands in the view of the mind, is the strongest, that
determines the will" (p. 9).

He defines motive like this: "By motive, I mean the whole of
that which moves, excites or invites the mind to volition, whether
that be one thing singly, or many things conjunctly" (p. 9). By
"strongest motive" he means "that which appears most inviting" (p.
10). Or as he puts it later, "the will always is as the greatest
apparent good is" (p. 10), in which case "good" means "agreeable"
or "pleasing" (p. 11).

Man's Enslaved Will

Hence the determination of our will does not lie in itself. It
is determined by the strongest motive as we perceive it, and
motives are given. Therefore all men are in a sense enslaved - as
Paul says - either to righteousness or to sin (Rom. 6:16-23), or as
Jesus put it, "Everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin" (John
8:34). We are all enslaved to do what we esteem most desirable in
any given moment of decision. We are enslaved to do what we want to
do most. We are unable to do otherwise provided we are not
physically hindered.

Edwards describes this situation with the terms moral necessity
and moral inability on the one hand and natural necessity and
natural inability on the other. Moral necessity is the necessity
that exists between the strongest motive and the act of volition
which it elicits (p. 24). Thus all choices are morally necessary
since they are all determined by the strongest motive. They are
necessary in that, given the existence of the motive, the existence
of the choice is certain and unavoidable. Moral inability,
accordingly, is the inability we all have to choose contrary to
what we perceive to be the strongest motive (p. 28). We are morally
unable to act contrary to what in any given moment we want most to
do. If we lack the inclination to study we are morally unable to
study.

Natural necessity is "such necessity as men are under through
the force of natural causes" (p. 24). Events are naturally
necessary when they are constrained not by moral causes but
physical ones. My sitting in this chair would be necessary with a
"natural necessity" if I were chained here. Natural inability is my
inability to do a thing even though I will it. If I am chained to
this chair my strongest motive might be to stand up (say, if the
room is on fire) but I would be unable.

Why This Clarification Matters

This distinction between moral inability and natural inability
is crucial in Edwards' solution to the so-called antinomy between
God's sovereign disposal of all things and man's accountability.
The solution is this: Moral ability is not a prerequisite to
accountability. Natural ability is. "All inability that excuses may
be resolved into one thing; namely, want of natural capacity or
strength; either capacity of understanding, or external strength"
(p. 150).

But moral inability to do a good thing does not excuse our
failure to do it (p. 148). Though we love darkness rather than
light and therefore can't (because of moral inability) come to
the
light, nevertheless we are responsible for not coming, that is, we
can be justly punished for not coming. This conforms with an almost
universal human judgment, for the stronger a man's desire is to do
evil the more unable he is to do good and yet the more wicked he is
judged to be by men. If men really believed that moral inability
excused a man from guilt, then a man's wickedness would decrease in
proportion to the intensity of his love of evil. But this is
contrary to the moral sensibilities of almost all men.

Therefore moral inability and moral necessity on the one hand
and human accountability on the other are not an antinomy. Their
unity is not contrary to reason or to the common moral experience
of mankind. Therefore, in order to see how God's sovereignty and
man's responsibility perfectly cohere, one need only realize that
the way God works in the world is not by imposing natural necessity
on men and then holding them accountable for what they can't do
even though they will to do it. But rather God so disposes all
things (Eph. 1:11) so that in accordance with moral necessity all
men make only those choices ordained by God from all eternity.

One last guideline for thinking about God's action in view of
all this: Always keep in mind that everything God does toward men -
his commanding, his calling, his warning, his promising, his
weeping over Jerusalem, - everything is his means of creating
situations which function as motives to elicit the acts of will
which he has ordained to come to pass. In this way He ultimately
determines all acts of volition (though not all in the same way)
and yet holds man accountable only for those acts which they want
most to do.